Next to creating and posting quality imagery to sell, key-wording is probably the most important task we can perform in connection with marketing your artwork. It is also the most frustratingly tedious job and altogether too easy to postpone or do a hurried or slipshod job. Without accurate key-words your images will in all likely-hood never be found.

After looking at expensive and complicated software to aid in performing this task I finally found what I believe to be a very good solution. The price cannot be beaten - it's free, with the restriction that you not perform a service for pay with the software. As far as using the software is concerned, I don't think it could be any more simple.

Go to http://arcurs.com/keywording/index.php The key-wording tool consists of one blank data field, one drop-down list with three options and a "Search". Type in one or two words that describe the image you are key-wording, select weather you want to consider all images, photos only or illustrations only and click the search button. Based on your description you will get a page of image thumbnails. Simply select the images "most like" your image and click "Accept chosen images and proceed to keyword selection".

From the list of words retrieved select the ones that most accurately describe your image and discard the rest. When you have the list trimmed to fit your image click "Show list of chosen keywords". This will give you a list of words which you can copy and paste into the meta data field of your image.

Author:

I have been involved in photography on and off for more years than I care to admit. When I initially discovered my passion for photography through the lens of my first SLR, a Pentax Spotmatic, film was the only game in town. Kodachrome II (shot at ASA 80) or Tri-X for b&w were my first choice. That said, the advent of the digital darkroom has been a godsend to me and as I continue to discover its' capabilities I am more and more convinced the only limitation is ones imagination.